The guest
Dr. Mark Hyman: Medical doctor and a leading figure in functional medicine, head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, founder of Function Health, and author of roughly 20 books on food and health.
What this episode covers
Andrew Huberman and Dr. Mark Hyman explore functional medicine as a systems-level approach that treats the body as an interconnected network rather than isolated symptoms. They cover nutrition (whole foods, the dangers of the starch-fat-sugar combination, the seed-oil debate), the supplements most people are deficient in, and the case for personalized blood testing. The conversation widens into a hard look at the industrialized American food system, Big Food's lobbying and influence over health organizations, and the politicization of the MAHA movement. They close with cutting-edge longevity and regenerative tools: GLP-1 drugs, peptides, NAD/NMN, exosomes, stem cells, ketogenic diets for mental illness and cancer, and advanced cancer and Alzheimer's screening.
Recommended on this episode
ProductRecommended
Seatopia
Seatopia
“here's what I would do. And I don't have any relationship with this company”
“It's called seatopia.fish. it sources fish from around the world from... regenerative fish farms. So it's farmed, but it's healthy.”— Mark Hyman
ProductRecommended
N-acetylcysteine (NAC)
generic
“I do, yeah... Daily, yeah”
“ANDREW HUBERMAN: So do you also take N-acetylcysteine? MARK HYMAN: I do, yeah. ANDREW HUBERMAN: Daily? MARK HYMAN: Daily, yeah. ... 600.”— Mark Hyman
The guest's own work
BookBy the guestISBN verified
The Pegan Diet
Mark Hyman
“I mean, I've written so many books on this. "The Pegan Diet," "Food-- What the Heck Should I Eat?"”— Mark Hyman
BookBy the guest
Food: What the Heck Should I Eat?
Mark Hyman
“I've written so many books on this. "The Pegan Diet," "Food-- What the Heck Should I Eat?" I wanted to call it food-- what the fuck should I eat?”— Mark Hyman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Eat Fat, Get Thin
Mark Hyman
“And I wrote a book called "Eat Fat, Get Thin," where I cataloged the whole history of how we got there and what the problems were”— Mark Hyman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet, One Bite at a Time
Mark Hyman
“I wrote a book called "Food Fix-- How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet, One Bite at a Time," where I mapped out, from field to fork”— Mark Hyman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
The UltraMind Solution
Mark Hyman
“this has to do with its effect on the metabolism... And I wrote a book about this-- "UltraMind Solution."”— Mark Hyman
BookBy the guestISBN verified
Young Forever
Mark Hyman
“I wrote a book called "Young Forever," and I talked about longevity and the pathways.”— Mark Hyman
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
BookReferenced
Network Medicine
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
“folks at Harvard like Laszlo Barabasi who was studying this and wrote a book called "Network Medicine" about the body as a network”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Nutrition Against Disease
Roger Williams
“he gave me a book called nutrition against disease by Roger Williams. And this is, like, in 1980. And I read it”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Biochemical Individuality
Roger Williams
“Roger Williams, who discovered pantothenic acid, or vitamin B5. He wrote a book called biochemical individuality.”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Our Stolen Future
Theo Colborn
“there's a whole book on this that I read like almost 30 years ago called "Our Stolen Future" by Theo Colburn, which lays out”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
Silent Spring
Rachel Carson
“it was like the Rachel Carson "Silent Spring" version of a few years ago, which talked about the reproductive effects of these petrochemical toxins”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Emperor of All Maladies
Siddhartha Mukherjee
“Siddhartha Mukherjee... an oncologist who wrote a book called "The Emperor of All Maladies."”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Gene
Siddhartha Mukherjee
“He wrote "The Cell." He wrote-- ... He wrote a book called "The Gene," "The Cell."”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Song of the Cell
Siddhartha Mukherjee
“He wrote a book called "The Gene," "The Cell."”— Mark Hyman
BookReferencedISBN verified
The Eighth Day of Creation
Horace Freeland Judson
“I read that and I read "The Eighth Day of Creation" in roughly the same time period. Both are super impressive books.”— Andrew Huberman
ProductReferenced
Stelara
Johnson & Johnson
“But she was on Stelara, which cost costs $50,000 a year. It's a biologic.”— Mark Hyman
ProductReferenced
Primal Kitchen
Mark Sisson
“There's even things like Primal Kitchen, which you think is like a great, natural brand and started by Mark Sisson. And it's salad dressings and ketchup”— Mark Hyman
ProductReferenced
Hu Chocolate
Jason Karp
“Or Hu Chocolate... they bought Hu chocolate, which we think is a natural brand. It's the biggest-selling premium chocolate in America.”— Mark Hyman
ProductReferenced
Galleri
GRAIL
“it's called Galleri. It screens 50 of the most common cancers, many of which there's no screening test for.”— Mark Hyman
ProductReferenced
Prenuvo
Prenuvo
“a few years ago, I paid for a Prenuvo scan. Then I started seeing some of the pushback on whole-body MRIs”— Andrew Huberman
ProductReferenced
DMSA
generic
“DMSA. It's FDA-approved drug for heavy metal chelation... you can take a chelating drug after you go to a sushi restaurant.”— Mark Hyman
ProductReferenced
Ozempic
Novo Nordisk
“Insulin is a peptide. Ozempic is a peptide. GLP-1-- these are peptides. These are small miniproteins.”— Mark Hyman
Big reveals from this episode
- Hyman recounts getting chronic fatigue syndrome at 36 from mercury exposure in China and having to reverse-engineer his own recovery.
- A psoriatic-arthritis patient came off a $50,000-a-year biologic (Stelara) and all her meds after a six-week gut-healing diet.
- Cites the Minnesota Coronary Experiment: corn oil lowered LDL but raised death risk 22% per 30-point LDL drop.
- Calls Big Food's influence a coordinated business strategy, claiming the food/farm industry gave $192 million to the American Heart Association.
- Says he personally thinks it should be illegal to prescribe GLP-1 drugs without a mandatory nutrition consult and a strength-training program.
- Reveals 1 in 188 Function members tested with the Galleri blood test had an otherwise-undetected cancer.
- Describes giving himself IV exosomes after severe COVID depression and feeling 'resurrected' within hours.
- Claims a few dozen CEOs control everything from seeds to fast food in a roughly $16 trillion industry.
Worth remembering
- Americans now eat about 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour per year; flour has a higher glycemic index than sugar.
- National surveys show 90%+ are low in omega-3s, ~80% low in vitamin D, and ~50% magnesium deficient.
- One-third of human DNA codes for enzymes, all of which need vitamin and mineral cofactors that vary widely between people.
- Hyman's baseline supplements: 1-2g EPA/DHA omega-3, 2,000-4,000 IU vitamin D3, and a high-quality multivitamin.
- Magnesium forms matter: citrate is a laxative, malate for muscles, glycinate and threonate for brain and sleep.
- Europe allows about 400 food additives; the US allows roughly 10,000, exploiting the FDA 'GRAS loophole.'
- After four years on a GLP-1 drug, bowel-obstruction risk rises ~450% and pancreatitis risk ~900%.
- Your DNA takes about 100,000 hits a day; NAD activates sirtuins that repair it and boosts mitochondrial function.
- 'Lean mass hyper-responders' can see LDL spike dramatically on keto while obese diabetics see it drop on the same diet.
- Diabetics have roughly 4x the rate of Alzheimer's, which Hyman calls 'type 3 diabetes of the brain.'
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